


And This is London

by Boji



Category: British Actor RPF, LOTR RPS, Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Reality, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-12
Updated: 2008-02-12
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was what I wanted all along, you know? Back when you all thought I was a daft muppet who only wanted fame and fortune and Hollywood bollocks."</p><p>Sometimes all you need is a second chance. ~ Inspired by a meeting on the red carpet at the Bafta's 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This is London

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The people are real. The premise utterly fictional. Or, if you prefer, it happened in the universe next door.
> 
> Never say never. But, really I **never** expected that I would ever write RPS again. Or that I would ever write RPS Viggo  & Orlando again. But a moment, captured and immortalised on a youtube [video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puDFG-06QB8) (thanks to E!) galvanised the muse.

He'd thought about how he was going to say hello. Wondered if they'd hug - a manly back-slap of a thing, a far cry from the day when they'd rubbed noses. He'd wondered if they'd be reduced to a hand shake, or if they'd say hello with hands and fingers just the way they had before. Words unnecessary now and always. He'd thought about how he'd feel to have that voice, _his_ voice, murmuring a greeting in his ear again. Not elf-boy. Maybe not Orli either. Orlando had grown out of that moniker, left it behind on the road to god only knows where.

Truth be told, Orlando had thought about it from the moment Fi had called to tell him that he'd be presenting a Bafta this year. She'd gone on about how good it would be to show his face, up his profile, but her words had turned to buzz-static in his ear as Orlando realised Viggo - nominated as Best Actor - would be there, in the same place, city, time as him. Unlike last year when Viggo had been filming in Hoxton and Orlando had been... elsewhere.

Same as always.

So yeah, he'd thought about it. Poured himself a drink about it, before he'd left the house that Sunday afternoon. And en route, with the chauffeur-driven car gliding silently across London, he'd had to resort to breathing exercises to stop his stomach from tensing and dipping. If Fi noticed, he hoped she'd put it down to his being nervous about presenting.

When he'd thought about seeing Viggo again, well it hadn't occurred to Orlando to imagine the backdrop, the people, the noise. Cacophony had swelled round him from the moment Orlando had opened the car door and stepped out onto the London street. Flash bulbs were exploding, fans voices mingled with photographers cries and, once they spotted his flattened curls, shouts of _Orlando, over here! Orlando! Orlando!_ started sweeping through the crowd like a mantra-chant. He could tell the fans from mere spectators. They leaned over barricades, screamed his name in two syllables, waved banners, notebooks and pictures at him. They craned necks for a touch, a kiss, connection. And, in return, Orlando reached out over grasping hands with a pen someone had suddenly put in his hand. Each call of his name became an autograph or two, a look into someones flushed face.

And then the next person and the next.

The smile on his face sometimes a grimace, sometimes fixed, Orlando flowed up the red carpet on a tide of actors, security, press, and publicists, buffeted by a wave of beckoning voices. And, always, out of the corner of his eye he was searching, searching to catch a glimpse of those shoulders, a head, slightly tilted. That jaw line that he'd once run his fingers across. Viggo was sporting a beard now,like one of the Riders of the Rohan. Orlando knew that.

His eyes darted past one black-tie ensemble to the next as he searched. He hadn't expected the flutter and nauseating flip his stomach gave when he finally caught sight of Viggo who was standing in the middle of the red carpet, leaning in to hug Ian whose hair was whiter than Gandalf's. They were laughing, patting each other on the back, and Orlando was stepping past one person and behind the next, moving quickly and then suddenly there he was... in front of Viggo. And he was the one reaching out, his hand moving to clutch the other man's bicep, a scattered, frantic, thought reminding him that it was friendly, but not too friendly. And then Viggo, in his unstoppable way, was pulling him close into a hug and it was just the two of them - and a moment later three of them as Ian stepped forward into their arms.

Touches. A knuckle caress along the line of Orlando's jaw while Ian pressed a papery kiss to his face. Eyes which spoke of greeting and missing and that undying spark of connection, while words of laughter and joy were swallowed in a din of voices and flash guns. And there, on Viggo's lapel a greenleaf. Orlando raised his gaze to see a smile reflected in the eyes of a man whose moods he'd once understood better than his own. And then the moment was broken...

They stepped back into the fray. People called his name, tapped Orlando on the shoulder, guided him this way and that through a throng of noise, perfume and shimmery material. Fi was by his side again, but all Orlando could hear were his own tumbling thoughts. Thoughts of Viggo. Thoughts of tumbling into Viggo... into bed with Viggo.

Maybe they'd have a drink... A bite to eat... A proper natter...

Climbing the carpeted stairs, knees weak as a stumbling foal's, Orlando forced himself to pay attention to those gawping and greeting him, to nod and shake hands without getting Fi's elbow in his ribs. When they were finally seated in the auditorium he found himself rows and seats apart from Viggo. Worlds away, as in daily life.

It was second nature for Orlando to tuck the pang of what he'd call regret away in the part of himself where memories faded and dreams atrophied. After all, desire was of the ego. Fleeting. Transient. Wishes weren't horses and he'd used up more than his quotient of luck, what with his back, the recent car prang and his whole damn career. Being with Viggo. Waking up with Viggo. Drinking tea while Viggo pottered about in bare feet and half zipped jeans. All those images that could have been entitled _life, home, being,_ they were little more than a once-upon-a-time-wish made by a dreamstruck, lovestruck, luststruck boy he'd been.

And that wasn't who he was. Not anymore.

 

Who he wasn't was no longer someone who could afford to spend the entire night watching Viggo watch the awards. So, he laughed when Fiona had leaned over to make some comment or other about Johnathon Ross and tried to forget he'd ever flown half way round the world just to get to a dinner party. He sat in a darkened auditorium and told himself that he didn't remember wading through an icy river, following a man who was following the moon.

If not for the _in memoriam_ segment he might have said nothing. Chanced nothing. But there, at the end of faces he barely recognised was a friend: Heath whose death was still utterly-fucking-unbelievable to him. Heath who'd been three years younger than Orlando, more talented, braver. Brave like Viggo in terms of his art. And in his life? What did Orlando know of Heath's life? They'd drifted into being drinking friends. Clubbing friends. The kind of friendship Viggo abhorred. The kind of friendship that let people like Heath fall.

In those moments as the scene from _Brokeback Mountain_ played out, sorrow rose to garrote him. Orlando knew the cameras were roving round the auditorium like a pack of swirling bees and he wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of his tears. But it was in that moment, with his lips pressed into a thin line and Heath's spirit haunting the opera house that Orlando chose the road not taken. The one he'd turned from. Wishes and regrets solidified into purpose and determination.

Now all Orlando needed was an opportunity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

In the great room at the Grosvenor House, people tabled hopped as the main course gave way to desert. Some people had brought their own cameras, while others flipped phones open. Everywhere, people leaned this way and that into one shot or another. Fiona was working the room.

And Orlando?

He was avoiding Keira (who'd be her regular inquisitive self) and Kevin who'd actually copped a feel earlier. If he tried that again Orlando didn't think he could stamp down on the shudder that had flared up his spine. Sinking down into the nearest empty chair, Orlando picked up a wine glass, checked it for dregs, then poured himself a glass from a bottle that had evidently been left standing to breathe. Two gulps and he was pouring himself another, his mind too full of other people's half sentences to hold a mantra.

'Crap mentor you are' he thought to himself, remembering Courtney's effervescent joy as she'd leaned on a mouthful of syllables to get her through the day. Oh sure, invoking _Nam-myoho-renge-kyo_ worked alright. Brought what you needed into being. But it also kicked up all the garbage putrefying in your subconscious as payment. Which explained everything really. Why he'd done the play. Spoken up for Unicef. Gone to Nepal. Tried to claw off the miasma left from the Mouse, and Hollywood's power games.

He was casting his mind back over that convoluted thought when Ian McKellen slid into the banqueting chair beside him.

"A penny for them?" he asked Orlando.

"I just... Heath's dead." There was another glass of wine after that thought and then, remembering his half-formed plan to say _something_ to Viggo he flagged down a waiter and asked for a coffee.

Ian reached out and lay his hand a top of Orlando's. "Heath's death was a senseless tragedy," he pursed his lips slightly. "But that doesn't explain the dutch courage and the zeal in your eye all evening."

"What if Buddhism's wrong and this is all there is? Or what if it's right and I'm not letting myself evolve because I'm trapped in other peoples' expectations? Or..." Orlando twisted a chunk off a bread roll, buttered it and popped it in his mouth.

"Dear boy..."

"I can't stop thinking about the road not taken, Ian. It was what I wanted all along, you know? Back when you all thought I was a daft muppet who only wanted fame and fortune and Hollywood bollocks."

A grin played itself across Ian McKellen's lips wickedly. He leaned in close to Orlando's ear. "And instead what? You want Viggo's...?"

Heat rushed through Orlando's veins. He felt himself blush. Ducking his head slightly he couldn't stop his gaze from sweeping across the overly warm room. Viggo was standing by Kevin Spacey's table. A few words and then he was shaking hands with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran of all people. The blonde on that man's arm was leaning in closer and closer to Viggo, who stepped backwards as subtly as he could In his frock coat Orlando should have thought Viggo looked like an undertaker. Instead he kept thinking of the Georgette Heyer novels Sam read, because to him Viggo looked like fallen gentry. But then to Orlando, Viggo would always be regal.

He wiped a sudden tear from the corner of his eye and turned back to face Ian's all too knowing gaze. "D'you think he'll laugh at me? Or pat me on he head?" Orlando asked.

"Oh Orli, you know better than that now."

Right, right, he wouldn't laugh. He might just look at me yeah, with that slightly disappointed look and tell me that..." Trailing off, Orlando shrugged.

"You do know Viggo will always be Viggo. He won't pretend for you," Ian said.

"I don't want him to hide his light under a bushel. Don't think that, yeah?"

"But you would have wanted that wouldn't you, a couple of years ago?"

Orlando nodded. "Maybe. God I was such an idiot."

"Young. Foolish," Ian said. "You still are."

"I'm thirty one, Serena." The joke on _Sir Ian_ fell flat for once.

"Think you're ready to settle down do you?" Ian asked with a wry grin.

"Do you think he'll have me?" There was a grin in Orlando's voice, but they both knew he wasn't joking. And in return Ian offered up a serious question.

"Can you handle the press, and not getting work?" he asked.

"Got enough money. Mum's sorted," Orlando shrugged. "If I work hard I could do theatre OK."

"Not in LA." Ian said somberly.

"No, not in LA." Orlando found his gaze searching across the room again for that familiar gait, tilt of a head. The way Viggo punctuated his words by moving his hands. He spotted him speaking to Tim Bevan and Joe Wright. Britain's new hotshit director and one of the blokes from _Working Title_. "Oh God." Orlando rubbed his face with this hands, "You think I'm jumping the gun?" he asked, his voice half muffled against his fingers,

"You could say that it's been seven years since we saw the gun in act one dear boy," Ian said with a smile. He patted Orlando's hand again.

A long moment of indistinct background chatter gave way to the sound of chair legs scrapping against the floor. And then a different hand - broader, warmer fingers soft with just the occasional rough catch of a callous - was reaching out to clasp Orlando's fingers.

Opening his eyes, Orlando stared at Viggo's knees, at his polished shoes - so unlike his normal footwear. They were sat face to face, amid a sea of people. Shifting, Orlando crossed his legs bouncing one slightly against his other knee.

"Having fun, yeah?" he asked, eyes trying to focus on the patterned carpet that stretched across the Great Room floor.

It was the sound of paper crinkling that made him look up. Viggo had opened his frock-coat and was pulling a creme coloured envelope from the interior pocket. He held it out, and as Orlando took it he noticed the ink smears and the thumb print on the back.

"I knew you were in LA. That you went to Heath Ledger's memorial." Viggo chose his words with care, and spoke them softly. "I did leave you a message but it seemed trite, incomplete and I wanted you to know my thoughts, so I put my words on paper. Only, I found I wasn't sure where to send it."

Orlando nodded. His lips pursed in much the same way as they had been during the _memoriam_ and for much the same reason. He turned the letter over in his hands. And then Viggo moved his hands to cover Orlando's, his fingers sliding, caressing the back of Orlando's left hand.

"You believe in change. Reincarnation. Impermanence," Viggo said. "I was worried that you wouldn't let yourself grieve."

"You don't think I can be... I don't know, constant?"

Viggo smiled. "You had a lot to learn and far to go. And you were at the right age to be glutting yourself on life."

"Wasn't life... Wasn't real. But, you knew that."

"Yes."

Orlando stared dumbly at the thumb now stroking the underside of his wrist. There was ink staining one of Viggo's cuticles. Transient, unlike the tattoo's they both shared which were permanent.

"I'd like to think I would have done this last year," he said, his voice shaking slightly as his heart-beat increased. "If you hadn't bugged out at my birthday bash."

"This?" Viggo asked.

"Seized the moment. But then last year, well Heath was still... Heath. And I only knew half of what I know now and..."

The blue eyes staring at him were as patient and as they'd ever been, and filled with warmth Orlando hadn't realised he'd missed. And craved.

"Would you gentlemen like dessert?" There was a waiter leaning in over their shoulder with two plates, some small stylish mound of a dessert was decorated with fruit slivers and splashes of coulis.

"Would you?" Orlando asked. "Like dessert? Tea? Coffee?" When the word 'breakfast' fell out of his mouth at the end of that sentence the waiter backed off, slightly slack-jawed, eyes wide with a vicarious thrill. "That will be all round the kitchens in a second," Orlando said, looking up to catch Viggo's gaze.

"Do you care?" Viggo asked pointedly.

"No," The smile that glowed through Orlando felt - to him - as if it radiated out from the sun inked on his lower belly. "Took me long enough to get here, yeah, but I don't give a shit. You? You're up for Oscar."

"Are you asking me if I'm taking my mother? Or David?"

The grin grew wider, stretching Orlando's cheeks until they ached. "Are you asking me to the Oscars?"

Viggo shrugged. "Didn't George Clooney bring his agent one year?"

"Yeah, but it's America." Orlando bit his lip slightly, remembering Ian's droll recounting of actors, famous and not so famous, who lived closeted lives when not back home in London.

"And this is London," Viggo said quietly.

"Yeah it is. You give a rat's arse?" Orlando asked.

Viggo laughed. "I care about you, the work. Henry and my family of course. The rest is bread and circuses." He looked around briefly, before leaning in more closely. "What do you want Orli, can you tell me?"

"My shot." Orlando stared at Viggo silently for a moment then continued, knowing that this was his moment and maybe he'd never get another if he bottled out now. "Oh god, when it was so easy to have taken it Vig, I didn't realise what we had - you know not that we actually had anything -"

"We did have something."

"Right and then as I was telling Ian, I was a muppet."

"A muppet?" Viggo's voice was as warm as his hands, as warm as the thumb touch against Orlando's cheek bone.

"Yeah, daft. Blind. A plonker." Those fingers were on his lips and it was only for the briefest moment that Orlando cared whether or not Fiona, or anyone else noticed. He shrugged the old familiar worry off his shoulder. "You got to know, in terms of blokes there was only ever Atti and that was more a laugh than anything."

"And now?"

"I miss who I am when I'm with you," Orlando said. "I miss what we could have had and it means more to me than anything I could accomplish. So, I'm sorry it took me so long to get here and damn, if I missed my shot could you hurry up and say something, or if there was never any hope to start with and I'm a crazy moron, or..."

"Orli, if you're aiming to get thoroughly kissed here, you're going the right way about it."

"Here...?" Orlando laughed, half nervous, half drunk with the possibility of joy. "God, you're enough of a mad bastard that they'd think it was a joke."

"No joke." A slight tilt of the head and Viggo was leaning in, slowly. "If you don't want our second chance to begin in the full glare of the media's spotlight..."

"Speak now or forever hold your peace," Orlando said, his voice full of laughter.

"Something like that," those words were murmured against his lips.

The feel of soft beard against Orlando's face, tickled and then Viggo was swallowing his laugh, capturing his bottom lip and darting his tongue briefly and lightly across Orlando's palate. He shuddered, reached up and clutched at Viggo's bicep, deepening the kiss, tilting his head just a tad and then those wonderful hands were in his hair.

Neither man heard the sound of glass as it shattered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Across the room half-crowded room an agent's fingers lost their grip on a champagne as her friend and client, to her mind, ended his career.

"That has got to the hottest thing I've ever seen." The voice was giggle-packed and female. Fiona turned to stare at someone in a navy blue dress whom she knew she ought to have recognised. And then there was Keira Knightly laughing, her hand half-pressed to her mouth.

Fiona turned back and stared open-mouthed at the kissing tableau, or was that the kissing table? Her brain scrambling to hold any thought other than fearful fury. "I'm going to kill him," Fi muttered, barely nodding as someone handed her another glass of champagne. "I thought we were past this!"

"You don't get past love darling, didn't you know?" She turned to stare at Ian McKellen who was staring at the tableau with what she thought was a smug grin on his face. In fact it was joy, the smile blinding-bright as he got Keira to help him capture a photo on his mobile phone.

"I'm not calling Beanie with this news. He'd deafen me with his laughing. So, who had today's date?" The man asking the question was short and bearded. It took Fiona a moment to place him as Andy Serkis, who'd played _Gollum_ in that be-damned film. "In the pot, who had today's date?"

"Lord only knows, Dom or Billy probably. Whomever saw Orlando last," Ian McKellen was saying.

"Oh that would be Elijah," Keira offered helpfully. "They had lunch in LA. Who you sending the photo to?"

"If you don't call Livvy, she'll never speak to us again," Andy interjected.

Turning away from the bizarre conversation Fiona saw Viggo slip his arm around Orlando's waist and lead him from the reception room. And Orlando? Pressed so closely to Viggo side, leaning up, his mouth pressed against the other man's ear. Whispering, hell he probably had his tongue in Viggo's ear! Fiona sank into a chair and drained her champagne. "If that gets out, I'll never get him bookings again."

"Ah..." Ian sat down next to her and patted her knee. "Well..."

"What Ian's trying to say is that Viggo won't play the game, so Orlando won't either I assume." If asked Kevin Spacey, would never have admitted to the moment of pure bitterness that lanced through him as he watched Orlando Bloom walk out of the reception room at the Grosvenor house _with_ Viggo Mortensen.

"Why so glum then?" The cheery question was posed by Joe Wright who walked over to the table with an open bottle of champagne in hand. He leaned in, kissed the woman in the navy dress and Fiona realised she'd been Keira's co-star in _Little Women_.

"Orlando Bloom just sank his own career," Fiona said.

"What? Fuck, why?" Joe Wright asked, looking around him as if in search of an answer.

"Fuck would be right," Fiona waved her hand in the direction of the now vacated tables. "You must be the only person in the bloody world who didn't see him in an almost shag with Viggo-bloody-Mortensen."

"Yeah and?" Joe asked.

"Hollywood isn't as _au fait_ as we are, darling," Ian McKellen said, patting Joe Wright on the shoulder.

"Well that's bloody stupid. After all, love's love isn't it?"

"Oh don't be daft, this isn't love." Fiona rushed on, "Orlando's thinking with his..."

Before she could get any further in her diatribe, Joe cut in. "How does that quote go again darling?" he asked his fiance Rosamund. "About them who can see and them who are blind..."

"None so blind as those who cannot see," Ian murmured.

"Right," Joe said. "And, well those two - it's love innit?"

"And you know this in your infinite wisdom because?" Fiona asked, cuttingly.

"Read it on the internet, didn't I?" Joe Wright said, before raising a glass of champagne to his lips to the sound of jeers, claps and laughter.


End file.
